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Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE A (Applied Physics & Engineering)  2013, Vol. 14 Issue (8): 574-582    DOI: 10.1631/jzus.A1300082
Mechanical Engineering     
Three-dimensional numerical simulation of a vertical axis tidal turbine using the two-way fluid structure interaction approach
Syed-shah Khalid, Liang Zhang, Xue-wei Zhang, Ke Sun
Deepwater Engineering Research Center, Harbin Engineering University, Heilongjiang 150001, China
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Abstract  The objective of this study was to develop, as well as validate the strongly coupled method (two-way fluid structural interaction (FSI)) used to simulate the transient FSI response of the vertical axis tidal turbine (VATT) rotor, subjected to spatially varying inflow. Moreover, this study examined strategies on improving techniques used for mesh deformation that account for large displacement or deformation calculations. The blade’s deformation for each new time step is considered in transient two-way FSI analysis, to make the design more reliable. Usually this is not considered in routine one-way FSI simulations. A rotor with four blades and 4-m diameter was modeled and numerically analyzed. We observed that two-way FSI, utilizing the strongly coupled method, was impossible for a complex model; and thereby using ANSYS-CFX and ANSYS-MECHANICAL in work bench, as given in ANSYS-WORKBENCH, helped case examples 22 and 23, by giving an error when the solution was run. To make the method possible and reduce the computational power, a novel technique was used to transfer the file in ANSYS-APDL to obtain the solution and results. Consequently, the results indicating a two-way transient FSI analysis is a time- and resource-consuming job, but with our proposed technique we can reduce the computational time. The ANSYS STRUCTURAL results also uncover that stresses and deformations have higher values for two-way FSI as compared to one-way FSI. Similarly, fluid flow CFX results for two-way FSI are closer to experimental results as compared to one-way simulation results. Additionally, this study shows that, using the proposed method we can perform coupled simulation with simple multi-node PCs (core i5).

Key wordsVertical axis tidal turbine      Renewable energy      Two-way fluid structure interaction (FSI)     
Received: 17 March 2013      Published: 01 August 2013
CLC:  P743  
Cite this article:

Syed-shah Khalid, Liang Zhang, Xue-wei Zhang, Ke Sun. Three-dimensional numerical simulation of a vertical axis tidal turbine using the two-way fluid structure interaction approach. Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE A (Applied Physics & Engineering), 2013, 14(8): 574-582.

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http://www.zjujournals.com/xueshu/zjus-a/10.1631/jzus.A1300082     OR     http://www.zjujournals.com/xueshu/zjus-a/Y2013/V14/I8/574

[1] Wei-feng Wu, Xin-ping Long, Xiao-ling Yu, Quan-ke Feng. A new power generation method utilizing a low grade heat source[J]. Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE A (Applied Physics & Engineering), 2012, 13(2): 140-145.